MSU student media center named for former Reflector guide

STARKVILLE The office complex housing student publications at Mississippi State now is a memorial to former university newspaper adviser Henry F. Meyer.

Some of his students joined his faculty colleagues and friends, university officials and currently enrolled students Friday morning to officially designate the Meyer Student Media Center.

The University Drive facility honoring the late Starkville resident has for many years housed offices and operations of The Reflector, the campus newspaper, and The Reveille yearbook.

Meyer died in early 2000 at age 87.He was Reflector adviser nearly 30 years, a decade of which he also taught in MSU's communication department. Before going to campus, he co-owned Starkville Publishing Co., which printed the then-weekly Starkville News and, for many years, the Reflector.

Charlie Mitchell of Vicksburg and Sid Salter of Jackson, MSU graduates and former Meyer students, were featured speakers for the event. Mitchell is managing editor of the Vicksburg Post, and Salter is “Perspective” editor of The Clarion-Ledger.

“While the tools of journalism change, the rules of journalism don't,” Mitchell said.”When people enter this student media center five or 10 years from now, I hope they won't see the same equipment that's in there today.They should see a name on the door, however, that stands for the time-tested principles good journalists follow.”

Salter praised Meyer for having “taught a brand of journalism bounded in service.”

“He was the prototype community journalist who believed journalists didn't leave any kind of baggage at the doorstep,” Salter said.”He believed that, while a journalist is an observer of the community and someone who makes comments, sometimes unpleasant, about the community, he or she also is someone who has a responsibility to roll up their sleeves, put their shoulders to the wheel and try to make the community better.”

Meyer's daughter, Marjorie M. Goldner of Huntington, N.Y., represented her mother, Mildred, who lives in Florida, and her brother Melvin, a California resident.